“We talked about it. He was unbearably cruel to her.”
“Did she ever say she wanted to pay Rhys back for what he’d done to her?” Leo is working on a theory. Ceri and Angharad are both women living in the margins of their community, scarred by events in their past. What if their mutual hatred of Lloyd drew them together? Ceri had left The Shore before Lloyd died, and they know from the cameras on the driveway that she didn’t return on foot, but could she have come back by boat?
Ffion reaches behind her chair and pulls up an evidence bag. “Do you recognize this?”
“It’s my life jacket. I keep it in a locker on the lugger.” Angharad gives a sad sigh. “Kept.”
Shortly after arresting Angharad this morning, Ffion had broken the news that the red-sailed lugger was at the bottom of the lake.
Angharad had wept. “She’s been with me for forty years.”
“I’m so sorry.” Ffion had looked as though she might cry too, and Angharad had put a hand on her arm.
“Seren is safe. And that is all that matters.”
Leo indicates the rusty stain on the grubby life jacket. “How can you explain the fact that it has Rhys Lloyd’s blood on it?”
Angharad frowns. “I can’t.”
“And that divers have seized rope from your boat that matches fiber patterns found on his body?”
“I have no idea.”
“Where were you on New Year’s Eve?” Ffion says.
“I was at home all evening.”
Ffion makes a note in her book. “Can anyone corroborate that?”
“Of course.” Angharad smiles at Ffion. “Your mother.”
“My—”
“Elen came to me around eight thirty, I think. I’d prepared supper, although we ended up eating it outside, with the animals. Bloody fireworks—they should be banned.”
Leo can feel a headache brewing. Is there anyone Ffion and her family aren’t tangled up with? “Your boat went in to Steffan Edwards for repair on January second, correct?”
“Yes. It had been out on its mooring for a few days, and when I rowed out on the second, I noticed a hairline crack on the central buttress. I must have forgotten to pull up the centerboard, and the lake had been choppy, so…” She catches Leo’s blank expression. “Bigger boats have keels below the waterline, to stop them tipping over. In smaller boats, like mine, the bottom of the boat is flatter. The stability comes from the centerboard.”
“Is that something you’ve done before?” Ffion says. “Left the centerboard down?”
“I can’t recall ever doing it.”
“Apart from the centerboard,” Leo says, “was anything else out of place?”
Angharad’s gaze drifts to the wall as she thinks. From the corridor, Leo can hear footsteps, then one officer briefing another. “The locker.” Angharad snaps her attention back, her eyes wide. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but…I never wear a life jacket, you see—I know I should, but old habits die hard—so it’s always at the bottom, under the spare rope and the diesel can.” She grips the side of her chair, animated for the first time since the interview began. “But when I rowed out on the second—when I found the damage to the buttress—the life jacket was on top.”
“You’re sure?” Ffion says.
“A hundred percent.” She sits up straight. “Someone had been on my boat.”
Leo thinks through the possibilities. If it was Ceri who used Angharad’s boat to dump Lloyd’s body, how had she gotten out to the mooring? Did someone take her? And in what? Leo runs through the guests who arrived at The Shore’s party by boat. Any one of them could have slipped away from the party, but only one of them had a grudge against Lloyd.
Huw Ellis.
Was he working with Ceri? If so, why go to all the trouble of taking Angharad’s boat when they could have taken Lloyd’s body on Huw’s motorboat? It doesn’t make sense.
And then, suddenly, it does.